by Nora Roberts
shrugged. “You can find anybody. I’m exploring the possibility you knew him, Naomi. In New York.”
“Knew him.”
“Know him,” Mason corrected. “Even casually. Someone who came into Harry’s restaurant. You may have waited on him. He could have asked anyone, casually, about you. Especially if he’s near the same age. They’d think he had a little crush maybe, something that innocent. And it’s oh, Naomi, she’s studying photography, or Naomi’s going off to college in the fall to study photography. He says, wow, at Columbia? and it’s oh no, some college in Rhode Island. We’re sure going to miss her.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It would be easy.”
“Bowes released another name and location the summer before your sophomore year. He was all over the press again. Vance’s book got another bump back onto the bestseller list,” Mason added. “The movie ran on cable.”
“I remember. I remember,” Naomi said again. “I was so afraid those first couple weeks back at school someone would connect me. But no one did. Or I thought no one did.”
“Something like that could’ve triggered it. Bowes got a lot of attention, a lot of mail, more visitors—more reporters getting clearance to interview him from that July when he made the deal, right through to October when the attention waned again.”
“And in November, this man came to Rhode Island, probably for me.”
“We’re checking all the correspondence, the visitors’ logs—back ten years, the records aren’t as easy to come by as they are now. But this is someone who keeps tabs, who’s probably developed a relationship with Bowes—or believes he has. Just as he believes he has one with you.”
“He does have one with me.”
“Everything you remember helps. Your memory of that first Friday night, it helps, it gives us your movements, and with them helps us see his. You remembered something else from college.”
“The club trip my junior year. Presidents’ Day weekend. Cold as it gets, but we piled in a couple of vans and drove to New Bedford. Winter beach theme. We shot for a couple of hours on the freezing beach, then we went into town to eat. That’s what I remembered. How this other student sitting across from me—Holly, I don’t remember her last name—said something about how come guys stared at me, I already had a boyfriend. And she pointed toward the bar, kind of smirked. I looked around, but the guy she’d pointed out had his back turned.”
As she had that afternoon, Naomi walked through it again.
“She got up—I guess she was feeling the beer—she was one of the seniors, and ordered a beer. She walked up to him. I even heard her say he could buy her another beer, that I was taken, but she wasn’t. He just walked out. Didn’t look back, just walked straight out, which annoyed her. And I did feel something. I felt uncomfortable, exposed. I put it down to embarrassment because she was a little drunk, and she said how Barbie dolls like me always got the attention, how he’d watched me on the beach earlier. We took some more shots around town, then drove to Bridgeport, spent the night at a motel, took more pictures the next day. We were supposed to keep at it, come back on Monday, but a storm, a bad one was coming in, and we opted to go back, finish up closer to the campus. I never heard about the woman he’d killed until you told me this morning.”
“Who was she?” Xander asked.
“She worked at the restaurant where you had your early dinner. She got off at seven that Friday, had a yoga class in a studio in town. Her car was still in the lot the next morning, her husband frantic. They found her body Sunday morning on the beach where Naomi’s club spent that Friday afternoon.”
“It’s not a coincidence. Did he use her car?” Naomi asked. “The way he did with Liza?”
“No. We believe he had his own vehicle. Incapacitated her or forced her into it.”
“Middle of February,” Xander speculated. “Cold, windy, storm coming in. He sure as hell didn’t kill her outside. Maybe he rented a motel room, or had a van.”
“A lot of motel rooms in that area. The locals checked every one, came up empty.”
“He’d had time to think about it,” Xander pointed out. “To prepare. You put down a tarp, do what you’re going to do. TV or radio on, she’s gagged, who’s going to hear?”
“I wish I’d gotten up, gone to the bar, gotten a look at him. At least I could give you a description.”
“This Holly did. Maybe she remembers.”
Naomi just shook her head at Xander. “She was half lit, a decade ago. In any case, I don’t remember her last name, have no idea where she is.”
“Your brother’s FBI. I bet he can find her.”
“Yeah, we can find her. We will find her. She’s the only one we know of who knows what he looks like. Or looked like, so it’s worth a shot. Do you want a break from this?”
“No, keep going. You said a runaway in New York. In July—between these two murders.”
He took her through that, plucking at her memories, then called it when Xander got up to grill the steaks.
“Just give me the next you have,” Naomi insisted. “So I can think about the time and place, what I was doing.”
“April of my sophomore year—your senior year. Spring break. You, me, the uncles, we road-tripped it down to South Carolina, stayed a week in that beach house Seth found.”
“I remember. It rained four of the six and a half days we were there.” Remembering made her smile. “We played a hell of a lot of Scrabble and rented movies. But . . . that’s nine months, isn’t it? Nine months between. Doesn’t it usually escalate?”
“It does, and I think he practiced between July and April. Disposed of the body or bodies.”
“It’s going to be like . . . Bowes. Even when you find him, you might never know how many he killed.”
“Let’s worry about that when we get to that.”
“But—”
“How do you want your steak?” Xander interrupted.
“Oh. Ah. Medium rare for me, medium for Mason.” She sloughed it off, rose. “I’ll go dress the salad.”
They’d take that break, she decided, dig into that pocket of normal. Then she’d go back to that rainy week at the beach, and whatever came after it.
She wouldn’t stop.
Twenty-seven
When she turned to him in the night, Xander came half awake.
“Just a dream.” He slid an arm around her, hoped she’d settle again. “You’re okay.”
“He was chasing me. Through the forest, along the beach, everywhere I went. Right behind me, but I couldn’t see him. Then I fell into a pit. But it was the cellar. And when he put the rope around my neck, it was my father.”
He lay quiet a moment. “I’m no shrink, but that’s pretty straightforward, right?”
“I dream of that cellar more than anything else. I can even smell it in the dreams. I never get out of it, in the dreams. He always comes back before I can get away, get away from him.”
“He’s not going to get out.”
“But he has an apprentice, a competitor, whatever this is. I can’t be afraid, Xander. I can’t live afraid. Before all of this, before that night, I used to dream of finding a puppy and being able to keep it, or riding the brand-new shiny bike I wanted so bad. I’ll never go back to that, that simple, that innocent, but I won’t live afraid. I did get out of the cellar. I got out. I got Ashley out. I won’t live afraid of what didn’t happen, or what’s going to happen.”
“Good. Smart. Can you go back to sleep now?”
“No.” She rolled on top of him. “And neither can you.”
Fisting her hands in his hair, she took his mouth aggressively, took her fill of it.
“I have purpose.”
“Yeah,” he managed as she ravished his mouth again. “I got that.”
“Not that.” Her laugh came low and husky. “Or not just that. Oh God, I love your hands on me, so hard and strong it feels like you could break me in half.”
Those hard, strong hands gripped her hips
. “You don’t break easily.”
No, she didn’t. She’d nearly forgotten that. She didn’t break easily. She scraped her teeth along his jawline, down his throat, reveling in the taste and texture, gathering pleasure and excitement from the rapid beat of his pulse against her lips.
His heart, a quick, thick thud against the press of her breast. He’d given that heart to her. She didn’t know, not yet, couldn’t be sure, not now, what to do with it, for it. But she wouldn’t be afraid of being loved.
She wouldn’t fear the gift.
Strong, she thought. He was strong, body and mind and will. She would never be weak, never forget her own strength. His strength would remind her, even challenge her.
She rose up. Moonlight again, she thought. Here was moonlight, as it had been the first time they’d come together like this. Light, dark, shadows, living together to tint the air, to somehow sweeten it.
She took his hands, brought them to her breasts, to her own heartbeat.
“I’m what you need.”
“You are.”
For a moment, she pressed her hands to his. “Everyone should have what they need.”
She took him in, slow, slow, stretching the moment like a fine silver wire. “Oh, what being with you does inside me.”
And she began to move, a gentle, sinuous roll. Torturously arousing, a smoky, smoldering fire in the blood. He fought to let her set the pace, that slow burn of a pace, to stop himself from simply clamping around her like chains, taking her, taking his release.
Pleasure, so acute it sliced. Desire, so intense it seared. And love, so deep and yet so new it drowned him.
As if she knew, she smiled. “Wait.” Her eyes closed as she rolled her hips, kept him trapped and on the edge of torment. “Wait. And you can take what you need. Take what you want. How you want. Just wait.”
While he watched, barely able to breathe, her head fell back, her back bowed. Her arms rose to circle her head. All movement stopped. She was a statue, bathed in moonlight, made in moonlight.
She made a sound, half sob, half triumph. Then she smiled again; her eyes, opened and slumberous, met his.
His tether snapped. He had her on her back, under him, her arms still over her head, his hands clamping her wrists.
All that need, all that want, all that torment rushed together inside him. He drove into her like a man possessed; perhaps he was. Her shocked, breathless cries only added fuel.
He took what he needed, what he wanted. Took until there was nothing left for either of them.
And that was everything, for both of them.
—
In the morning Xander scowled at a tie as if deciding whether to wear it or hang himself with it.
“I don’t think Donna would care if you didn’t wear a tie.”
“No. But . . . I’m a pallbearer. Her daughter asked Kevin and me to be pallbearers.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.” How much harder would that be for him? she wondered, and walked to her closet—which needed organizing since most of the clothes shipped from New York remained in boxes.
“You don’t have to go.”
She stopped, her hand on the black dress. “Would you rather I didn’t?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean you don’t have to. You don’t have to feel obligated.”
So much easier to stay home, she thought, to work in a quiet, empty house, as everyone in both crews would attend Donna’s funeral. And he was giving her the out.
“I didn’t know her very well, but I liked her. I know I’m not responsible for what happened, but I’m connected. I know you’ll have more friends than I can count there, but we’re together. It’s not an obligation, Xander. It’s respect.”
“I’m pissed off.” He tossed the tie on the bed, shrugged into the white dress shirt. “I’d shoved it down, but today I’m pissed off I’m going to carry a really good woman to a hole in the fucking ground.”
“I know.” She laid the dress on the bed, went to the dresser for a bra and panties. “You should be pissed off.”
While she dressed he picked up the tie again and, resigned, slid it under the collar of the shirt. “Ties are for bankers and lawyers,” he complained. “Or like Elton John said, the sons thereof.”
In her underwear, she turned to him, finished the knot herself. “Uncle Seth taught me. He said every woman should know how to tie a man’s tie, facing him. And I’d know why someday.” She smiled, smoothed the fabric down. “And now I do. Look at you, Xander Keaton, clean shaven.” She stroked a hand over his cheek. “Wearing a tie.” She angled her head. “Who are you again?”
“It won’t last.”
“And that’s fine, too.” She pressed her cheek to his. “This time I’m going to help you through. Let me.”
He let out a curse that ended on a sigh. Then put his arms around her. “Thanks. Tell me when you need to go. They closed Rinaldo’s for the day. People are supposed to go there after, but if you—”
“Just let me help you through.”
“Right. You’re half—more than—naked, and I’m not. Something off about that.”
“I’m about to be un-naked. Maybe you could let Tag out, make sure he does everything he has to do. I don’t want to leave him outside alone while we’re gone.”
“We could take him.”
“No, we’re not taking the dog to a funeral. He’ll be fine in the house as long as he has a rawhide and his stuffed cat. And a ball. I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
“You’re the first and only woman I’ve known who says that and means it. Hey!” He snapped his fingers at the dog, who instantly grabbed his ball in his jaws and body-wagged. “We’re going out the back, pal, and keeping out of that topsoil.”
Xander grabbed his suit jacket, headed out the bedroom doors to the deck with the dog flashing ahead of him. “Lock this behind me,” he told Naomi.
She did, then put on the dress she hadn’t worn in . . . she couldn’t quite remember, and finished getting ready for her second funeral in the Cove.
—
He waited just inside the forest until Naomi and the grease monkey she was doing it with drove by in her car. Then he waited five full minutes.
Sometimes people turned around and came back, forgot something. His mother did it all the time, and once nearly caught him digging in the fake coffee can she used to hide cash from thieves.
Not that she’d ever been robbed, except by her son.
So he waited, watching the road through the screen of trees before he began the hike to the house on the bluff.
He’d parked nearly a quarter mile away—in the opposite direction from town. Had even put a white handkerchief on the side-view mirror, like he’d had a breakdown.
Getting into the house would be a nice little bonus. He’d seen how she lived, what she had. He wanted to touch her things, her clothes. Smell her. Maybe take a little souvenir she wouldn’t miss, at least not right off.
He knew about the alarm system, but he’d gotten through that sort of thing before. He’d done a lot of studying, put in plenty of practice.
She might have forgotten to set it—something else people did all the time. And he should know.
More than once, he’d walked right into houses, and right into the bedroom where some dumb bitch was sleeping.
He didn’t always kill them. You had to mix things up or even brain-dead cops might start piecing things together. Like sometimes he used ketamine—a jab with that, and down she went. Chloroform took longer, but there was something so satisfying about the struggle.
Once you knocked her out, tied her up, gagged that bitch—blindfolded her if you figured on letting her live—you could rape the shit out of her. He really liked when they came out of it while he raped them.
Then you mixed it up. You killed them, or you didn’t. He liked the kill even more than the rape, but sometimes you had to resist.
